BREAKDOWN 004 - Guide Puppies (Patreon)

Having seen my work with the RSPCA I was asked to photograph Guide Dog puppies for the Royal Society for the Blind (RSB). They do before and after photos of the dogs so this was a new litter before they started their training.

The brief was to take individual shots of each puppy, as well as a group shot, shots with the foster carers and some other promotional material. The shots needed to be on an infinite white background to match the existing style. Shooting infinite white can be problematic especially for someone like me who is noted for his darker style.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad if we were working with the standard tan dogs people associate with the Guide Dogs, but this entire litter was black, so black dogs on a infinite white background! The battle would be to get the whites white and the blacks black without losing detail on the dogs.

The RSB had been using the same professional photographer for many years but he had gotten too busy to keep doing it. So I had to go in and produce the result of someone who had mastered the technique and style they wanted, so it was a bit daunting.

The ideal for this setup is to light your background and subject  independently so you can adjust either without affecting the other. This can be done fairly painlessly if you have a standing human and you are shooting waist up so you can move the subject in and out, once you go full length and include the floor it gets tougher to light. 

First thing I did was light my backdrop. I setup 2 speedlites either side of the backdrop about a metre back in either direction and angles them to the opposite corners of the backdrop. Matching setting, height, angle etc as best I could to ensure the light was the same from both sides.

There are a couple of setting I use on camera to help - one I have on most of the time since I use single point focus (which is a little point I move around in the viewfinder to the exact point I want the camera to focus on,  which is particularly vital when using low apertures) is 'AF Point Display' that shows where the focal point is on the image and is the little red square you can see in the image below. The other useful tool is the 'Highlight Alert' which usually warns you that you have blown out an area and have lost detail which in this instant is exactly what you want. So all the black in the image below indicates where it is pure white (on camera this actually flashes on and off so its easier to see). So from this image we can tell that our background isn't hanging quite perfect due to the area in the top right, thats on all you really need is white around the edges of your subject the rest is easily fixed in post. You can also see the light falloff on the floor and how it gets quite dark in the corners. Many photographers use a reflective board or perspex to kick up more light or reflect the backdrop to get it brighter, neither of which I had for this shoot but would consider if I do it again.   

The other thing you can see in the image above is Loren's shirt which should be as black as the highlight black, particularly since we are not lighting her yet at all. The issue here is by lighting the large white backdrop it becomes its own light source. I tried a couple of things to address this, one was to flag my lights to entire there was no spill onto the subject or flare in the camera, so you can see the cardboard strips camera side on the two back lights to block the light. 

We also extended the white along the floor to get greater distance to the back so the light drop-off from the backdrop would be greater. But the backdrop still produced glare washing out the contrast on our subject.

We then lit out subject with two softboxes both gridded, in hindsight I think I probably should have removed the grids to get more fill on the floor shadows.

I had a nice dog bed on the floor for me to lie on. I was also shooting tethered to lightroom on a Microsoft Surface Pro via a Tether Tools cable so I can see the images and detail at a better quality but as always this provided problematic and worked about a third of the time. 

We were shooting at a hall which was part of a RSB facility in Gilles Plains, it had a large outdoor area next it it where the dogs went for a run and a toilet break before they were brought inside and placed in a pen.

When we were ready to start the first puppy was brought out and we recorded ID number and frame number so we could identify the images of the different puppies.

The first thing I noticed was how small the dog was on the very big backdrop, and even though I was basically lying on the floor the angle I was shooting meant that 50-60% of the frame was the off white floor and the rest was the lit white backdrop. I knew we were shooting people at some point and the extra would would be used but for a single puppy it was going to be a struggle. 

I was definitely lacking the contrast in camera I was after. After a while I did turn mt back lights so they were more pointed at the floor.

The image below is a RAW straight out of camera compared to the first rough test process I did, which came up I must admit better than expected.

This shoot was a huge learning curve for me and I felt I really struggled to get the image. I might have too high expectations and maybe I got as close as I could in camera. The client will be picking a couple of images of each dog so the next challenge will be processing all the selected images the same way to get a consistent finish. 

Turns out I didn't take enough batteries and by the end of the shoot the back lights were having recycle issues and only every 3rd or 4th frame has the background lit, or I had to make sure to take 1 frame every 10 sec or so which is not what you want with unruly puppies. I really like the shot below but its not the white we needed.

Here is the basic light setup for the shoot and gear used.

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Date: 23rd Sept 2018

Location: Gilles Plains, SA, Australia

Photographer: Steamkittens

Assistant: Ren Panno

Shoot Time: 2.5 hours

Total Frames: 702